August 1, 2018

Brazilian CS:GO kings SK Gaming reigned high over Cloud 9 at the ESL One Cologne Championship 2017. SK won with a decisive 3-0, although they were not handed over their championship that easily.

Both teams finished 6th at the group stages finishing with 3-2 records. SK Gaming beat out Virtus.pro, North, and Fnatic while dropping the games against Space Soldiers and G2 Esports. Cloud9 on the other hand lost their first two rounds against Ninjas in Pyjamas and Natus Vincere, before winning three straight against TyLoo, Immortals, and mousesports.

Cloud9 got revenge against NiP and Na’Vi though, beating them at the Playoff round. SK’s road to the finals involved OpTic Gaming and FaZe Clan.

The Grand Final

Cobblestone

SK took a commanding 10-5 lead on the Terrorist side to kick things off, including a 7-0 round run. Cloud9 then took a quick 3-0 lead at the second half but SK took the next 6 out of 7 rounds, including 2 defuses. Marcelo “coldzera” David showed absolute dominance as he had a game-high 28 kills, with the second most kills at 19.

Train

C9 looked to even the series in their comfort map. They took the Terrorist side to start and mirrored the first map, winning 10-5. Things were looking good for Cloud9 but things took a turn for the worst as SK came out guns blazing, winning 10 straight rounds in the second half, nine of which were aces. C9 fought hard to stay in the game winning the next two rounds, but SK were too much and they took an emphatic 2-0 series lead. Gabriel “FalleN” Toledo went off in this map, getting 34 kills, 27 of which were AWP kills.

Inferno

Backs against the wall Cloud 9 had to give it their all. Once again they took a 10-5 lead at the first half. Momentum was on SK’s side however, as they were down 9-1 at one point. At the second half they took six straight rounds to take the lead at 10-11. C9 rallied and took 4 rounds to lead once again at 14-11. Although Jordan “n0thing” Gilbert had the most kills on this map with 25, SK’s smart positioning and timing led them to take the next five rounds and onto victory.

With the victory, SK Gaming have won five out of their last six tournaments; ESL One COlogne 2017, IEM Sydney 2017, CS_Summit, ECS S3 Finals, and DH Astro Summer.

ESL One New York kicks off in September at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn.

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